Grief, Love and Life After Loss

When There Were Two

“Because we have ‘only’ children”, she said. I can’t remember my response now. I’m sure it was something pleasant and agreeable, but in my head I was shouting that I don’t have an ‘only’ child. I have two children. And yet, the fact remains that my not-only child, is still, in many ways forced to grow up like one. After all, she is the only child currently living in our household. But in her heart, she knows she has a sister.

What a strange way to go through childhood; knowing you have a sibling, even remembering them, but not sharing in the sibling life together. Is it what children who find out they have half siblings somewhere, or come to know of another sibling given away for adoption before they were born feel? I don’t know. All I can know is that in our house, our oldest daughter, may be our only living daughter, but she’s not our only daughter.

Even as the mother of two girls, I’ll never know what it’s like to parent them together, in the conventional sense, anyway. We were blessed to have three years and four months where our two girls shared their early lives together, but even then we didn’t have a typical lifestyle. There was no fighting, no crying over unshared toys, no complaining about the other when one didn’t get her way. And while I longed for the normalcy of that life, I still cherished the one I had. It may not have been ‘normal’ at all, but to our oldest daughter, it was. It was all she had ever known.

There may not have been moments of playing dolls, or blowing bubbles together, but there was holding hands, and reading stories, and so, so much more that made our children’s lives wonderful. Even in our youngest daughter’s death, a sense of joy and peace was present in my ever-so-resilient older daughter. A gentle understanding that our sadness was all for us, and not for her younger sister who was now free from the earthly constraints of her immobile body and mind.

I see a lifetime’s worth of compassion and tenderness bestowed on her. I see tolerance, and understanding. I see acceptance, and most of all, I see an immense amount of love.

When I hear or read of ‘typical’ mothers complaining over the blessings in their lives I become ruefully angry with them. I want to shake them and tell them to stop. To get a grip. To woman up, so-to-peak. This is not to say we don’t all complain over ridiculous ‘first world problems’ in our society and culture from time to time, and yes, we all ‘vent’ once in a while too, but when it comes to complaining about your very children for being just that – children, especially the ones you have planned for, prayed, for, wanted more than anything who are happy and healthy my acceptance and tolerance level dips dramatically. How dare you.

What I would have given to have those ‘problems’. Mine sounded more like, ‘seizures, choking, inability to chew or swallow, medication administration, can’t sit or lift head, can see, can’t think, PT, OT, neurology appointments, etc.’, and the part that really gets to me the most is never did I complain about my child’s life. I would beg for years of sleepless nights just to have ten more seconds to see her and hold her in my arms again.

This is my hindrance. My own bias, and personal issue. I get that. And would I have been one of the women complaining about my ordinary everyday life had I not had the experience of living with a severely handicapped and terminally ill child? I very well may have. It’s just that now I know better. And all I can do is be thankful that in the end those other mothers have no idea. Their children will grow out of sleepless nights and diapers. They will become little people who do the usual little people things. They will fight with their siblings, and go to each other’s ballet recitals and soccer games. And here in our life we and our not ‘only’ daughter will carry on, as she plays alone, not sharing toys or splitting Christmas gifts, the unbroken focus of our attention, just the three of us, holding the memory of the time when there were two, when we were four.